This invention relates to physical exercise equipment and more particularly to apparatus for providing exercise to persons of different ages and health conditions.
It is now generally accepted that most everyone should include exercise as part of their living routine. However, not everyong is able to engage in the same type of exercise. A young or robust individual should have strenuous exercise; a person recovering from a stroke or a heart attack gentler exercise; while a person with a condition, such as arthritis, limited exercise. Currently, several types of machines are used by the medical profession to provide these types of exercise. Examples of such machines are the treadmill and the exercycle. A drawback of these and similar machines is that the user must be able to run or physically move themselves. While this is not a problem for someone in good health, a person with a heart condition may not be able to run or use an exercycle. A person with arthritis may only have limited movement of their leg, hips or ankles. A bed or chair-ridden patient can't walk or stand and yet may still need to exercise to help maintain muscle tone and aid circulation. What is required is exercising equipment which is usable by the sickly as well as by the robust individual by the ambulatory as well as the bed-ridden person.